IRA gets tough on disarmament

By Harry McGee

THE IRA last night said it would refuse to make any further moves on disarmament until commitments made by Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and the Irish Governments to restore the institutions were honoured in full. In a move that will likely lead to a problematic scenario in the wake of the Assembly elections on November 26, the Provisional IRA described their third decommissioning act last week as having comprised of the “largest amount of arms to date”.

Mr Trimble also came under criticism in the statement, which accused him of derailing the carefully-planned sequencing process by failing to live up to his side of the deal. He had given no “credible explanation” as to why he did so “The political process these initiatives were designed to facilitate has been halted without a credible explanation from those who stopped it.

“The leadership of the IRA honoured our commitments. Others have not fulfilled theirs. Until they do so, there can be little prospect of progress on the issues the [the Ulster Unionists] profess concern about.”

The Government last night said it had no comment to make on the IRA statement.

Meanwhile, the Taoiseach was last night presented with Judge Barron’s report into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974, which claimed 33 lives.

Promising that the report would be made available to the public as soon as possible, the Taoiseach said: “The bombings . . . were the most appalling outrages in the history of this island.”

He said that he understood that Judge Barron would report in the coming weeks on other occurrences under his remit, including the bombings of 1972 and 1973 in Dublin and the Seamus Ludlow case.

The inquiry was set up to investigate allegations of collusion between the British security services and the loyalists who carried out the bombings. Nobody has ever been charged for the 1974 bombings and Judge Barron’s investigation was delayed primarily because the lack of co-operation he received from British authorities hampered the work of the inquiry.  

See the original Irish Examiner report: 
http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2003/10/30/story409415774.asp